The Empire’s Corps: Book 01 - The Empire's Corps (9 page)

Winslow looked as if he were going to be sick. “I wish I could help you, but I really need the paperwork,” he said. He waved a hand at his empty desk. “This is a very busy time and we’re working overtime to fill countless requests from hundreds of different units that are about to depart Earth, or start intensive training cycles or…”

Howell slapped the desk, hard enough to sound like a shot. “My commanding officer’s next act was to consult with the Grand Senate, who ordered that his unit be deployed to Avalon as soon as possible,” he said, as Winslow jumped again. “The Grand Senate was not happy. They want us off the planet yesterday.”

“Then go,” Winslow said. His voice betrayed his fear. “Half of your requests…they’re hardly necessary.”

“I’m very much afraid that they are,” Howell said, firmly. There was no give in his voice at all. “I would hate to have to go back to the Grand Senate and explain that the reason we couldn’t depart on schedule was because the Supply Corps was throwing up barriers. I don’t think that even your career would survive their displeasure.”

“But…you’ve requisitioned billions of credits worth of supplies,” Winslow protested. “How am I supposed to account for them all?”

Howell smiled. “You’re supposed to do your duty and supply them to the officers who need them,” he explained, as if he were talking to a child. “I, not you, am responsible for justifying them. You are responsible for supplying them if possible…and I know that you have the items I have requested in storage. I want all of the red tape cut out and the items transferred to the
Sebastian Cruz
today.”

“Safety regulations prohibit transferring so many dangerous items within such a short space of time,” Winslow said, quickly. “We don’t have the manpower on hand…”

“Hire it from the orbital industrial nodes,” Howell said, sharply. “Let me worry about the safety. Your job is to make the funds available for their services. Once the pallets are onboard the transport, we can handle the rest.”

“But…all these supplies,” Winslow said, despairingly. “Fusion generators, portable fabricators, advanced machine tools, databases of colonial production systems and so much else. Why do you even need advanced machine tools?”

“We are going to be operating a long way from any base that can repair our equipment,” Howell explained, dryly. “Setting up a local production plant will only improve our logistics and, in the long run, save money. I would have thought that you would be in favour of it.”

“With everything you’re taking, you could set up a starship manufacturing plant in a few years,” Winslow said. Jasmine blinked in surprise. She hadn’t realised that that was even possible. Normally, it was at least three hundred years before a colony world started producing its own starships. Only a handful of new colonies, carefully planned by wealthy and independent foundations, developed an Empire-grade industrial plant within the first fifty years. “This is going to ruin my budget!”

“It will ruin your career if you don’t provide them now,” Howell warned. “The Grand Senate will be displeased. My commander will give them me as a scapegoat. I’ll give them you. You won’t be able to pass the buck to anyone else. It needs your signature, and your signature alone. I suggest that you get on with it.”

Winslow looked almost as if he were on the verge of fainting. The sudden menace in Howell’s voice was unmistakable. His eyes slipped to Jasmine’s face, ran over her uniform and weapons and then fell to the floor. He didn’t see her as a woman, but a deadly threat. She was almost insulted. Winslow was probably used to women who would be happy to do whatever he wanted, as long as he saw to their promotions. A woman who could actually look after herself would be alien to him.

“I’ll make it happen,” he promised, finally. He pulled a datapad out of a drawer and pressed his thumb against the scanner. “You’ll have the relevant permissions in an hour.”

“Good,” Howell said, leaning back in his chair. His voice hardened suddenly. “Because I promise you that I won’t be coming back again, Commander. I shall merely allow events to take their course, leaving us stranded here and you with the blame. I would hate to be in your shoes when the Grand Senate catches up with you. You’ll spend the rest of your life on a planet where back-breaking labour is the only way to survive.”

He stood up and saluted. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “We can find our own way out.”

Jasmine followed him down the stairs, past the guardhouse and back to the aircar. She didn’t dare speak aloud until they were back in the air, heading back to the Barracks. The Supply Corps might have surveillance devices scattered everywhere, just to record everything that was going on in their building. Or perhaps she was just being paranoid. No one in their right mind would want a record of everything that took place in there. It might be used against them at their trial.

“Sir,” she said, slowly. Marines were encouraged to ask questions outside of combat, yet she wasn't sure that she knew what question to ask. “Why was he so reluctant to give us anything?”

Howell snorted, staring down at the city below. A mass of protesters were marching along one of the main streets, demanding…something. She couldn’t read the banners from high above, but it didn’t look pleasant. The Civil Guard were working overtime to move in reinforcements from around the planet. The Marines wouldn’t be called in to handle crowd control, thankfully.

“Winslow is a petty little man who thinks his main priority is to build an empire of his own,” he said, finally. “He thinks that possessing an item gives him power over it. He’s forgotten that the ultimate purpose of the Supply Corps is to make sure that the armed forces get the weapons they need. If he gave them the weapons, he wouldn’t have them any longer, would he?”

Jasmine blinked in disbelief. “I don’t understand,” she admitted. “Why would he care?”

“Think about it,” Howell said. “A Marine Company is supposed to have at least two hundred MAG-74 assault rifles, with at least five hundred thousand standard rounds. If those rounds are actually fired off…well, the Company wouldn’t have five hundred thousand rounds any more. Winslow and those who think like him believe that the sole purpose of having the inventory is to have the inventory. They are reluctant to use their weapons because that would lower what they have in their inventory.”

“Madness,” Jasmine said, finally. “They’re insane.”

“It makes perfect sense, from their point of view,” Howell pointed out. “An inspection might show that their inventory wasn't complete, which would mean an investigation, perhaps even career death. In order to protect their careers, they delay as long as they can before sending out anything we might requisition.”

“But they could just order a new batch of supplies,” Jasmine said. “Or…would that cost them money?”

“Of course,” Howell said. “They don’t want to look as if they’ve recklessly spent their department’s budget, do they? Think what their political enemies would have made of it. I bet you that by the time we return to Earth, Winslow and his friends will have been purged because they handed over billions of credits worth of equipment to us. The internal auditors will hold them to account for it.”

“But we requested the supplies,” Jasmine said. “They can’t blame Winslow for that.”

“You’ll be amazed how logical illogical thinking sounds when it’s done by a committee,” Howell said, lightly. “The more divorced from practical reality any given theory is, the greater its fascination for those who are also divorced from reality.”

He smiled as the aircar came down to rest near the Barracks. “Anyway, time to get back to work,” he said. “I want you to report to the shuttles in twenty minutes. We need to start supervising the loading before someone manages to mess it all up.”

The next four hours passed slowly, but Jasmine barely noticed. A Marine Transport Ship was designed to allow pallets to be slotted in easily, yet they all had to be carefully logged and tracked so that supplies could be pulled out in transit if necessary. It never failed to amaze her just how much could be crammed into a single hull…and how tiny their requirements were compared to the vast stockpile built up in the Sol System. Winslow had had nothing to complain about, really; the Supply Corps had enough supplies stored in the Sol System alone to keep the Imperial Army operating for years. She was tired beyond measure when the loading was finally completed, thinking of her bunk and a long rest before she returned to the training ground. Everyone would be ahead of her.

She walked down to the shuttle hatch and stopped, staring out of a viewport towards Earth. Humanity’s homeworld had once been green and blue, but now it was a mixture of blue and a muddle brown colour. The lights of the massive mega-cities could be seen from orbit, lighting up the sky. Humanity’s homeworld was dying, killed by the race it had spawned. Jasmine’s homeworld, for all of its faults, was kinder than Earth, where there were places no one sane dared venture without a suit of heavy armour.

And yet, somehow, the sight left her with a lump in her thought. No one had said so directly, but everyone in the company had realized that this wasn't going a short posting.

She might never set foot on Earth again.

Chapter Eight

It may seem paradoxical, but despite having mastered faster-than-light spaceflight, it still takes time to send a message from one end of the Empire to the other. Humanity has spread out so far from Earth that it literally takes six months to send a message from Earth to the Rim, leaving planets on the edge of known space barely represented in the Senate. In the absence of FTL communicators, messages have to be transported on starships, while it can take years to reinforce the Imperial Navy detachments on patrol…

- Professor Leo Caesius,
The Waning Years of Empire
(banned).

Edward stood at one end of the tubing facility on the
Sebastian Cruz
and watched dispassionately as his Marines started to enter the compartment. It could be a daunting sight for civilians, but the Marines took it in their stride; they’d been placed in the tubes before, sometimes hundreds of times over the last few years. The compartment held thousands of tubes for Marines, yet only a handful would be required for his men. They would have plenty of room for supplies.

He glanced at one of the tubes, seeing the young teenage girl frozen in the eerie light. Leo’s daughter had been terrified of the stasis field, a common reaction. Time might stop within the confines of such a field, but people feared – irrationally – that thought would go on, leaving them frozen like a fly in amber, yet awake and aware. Edward knew from experience that the universe would just seem to blink and they’d be there. Mandy – or perhaps it was Mindy – wouldn’t have to experience the boredom inherent in any long voyage under Phase Drive. Edward had a private bet going with himself that her father would seek to enter stasis himself after he realised just how boring the journey was going to be.

It hadn’t always been so simple, he knew. Back in the early days of spaceflight, humans had hibernated like rodents and snakes, their body temperatures lowered to the point where they could be safely frozen and preserved over the years. It hadn’t always worked. The early mortality rate had shocked him when he'd researched the period in OCS. It made the Slaughterhouse look like one of the safest worlds in the galaxy. The march of science had, thankfully, removed the need to risk so many of his Marines. If the power failed, as it had on many of the early interstellar colony missions, they would just come out of stasis. They might even be able to survive the aftermath of whatever disaster had cut the power.

He looked back towards the girl, and then looked away. Mandy was too young to be attractive. The confidential reports from the Commandant had warned him that both of the girls had been sulking during their stay in the Marine Headquarters, suggesting that they wouldn’t adapt well to Avalon. The Professor’s wife had been worse; after all, there was no hope of her ever receiving rejuvenation treatments now. They simply didn’t exist outside Earth and the Core Worlds. There were treatments that were offered to colonists who were willing to settle specific worlds, but Fiona was simply too old to take one and live. The Professor wasn't going to have a happy married life.

A line of Marines marched past him, pausing long enough to salute. He was pleased to see that they looked calm and composed, rather than the near-panic that most civilians showed when they came face-to-face with the stasis tubes. A claustrophobe would hate them, even just for the handful of seconds that they’d be in the tube and aware that they were in the tube. But then, a claustrophobe would never have made it through Boot Camp, let alone the Slaughterhouse. Edward remembered crawling through tiny passageways, barely wide enough to admit him, and shivered inwardly. The Slaughterhouse more than lived up to its name.

“All present and accounted for,” Gwen informed him. Edward nodded, relieved. Being late for muster was a disciplinary offence, but it happened more often than the Marine Corps liked to admit. Marines would go off on leave, find a girl – or a boy, if their tastes ran that way – and lose track of time, aided by alcohol or recreational drugs. When they returned to awareness, they would be horrified to discover that they had overslept and they were late for muster.

“Good,” he said, looking over at the Marines. They looked ready for anything, carrying their weapons and survival equipment with them. There was no need for them to be naked or unarmed within the stasis tubes and so they carried their weapons, just in case of trouble. He raised his voice, hearing it echoing all over the compartment. “You may enter your tubes.”

***

The compartment was nothing, but stasis tubes, each one large enough to hold a good-sized Marine and his or her equipment. Jasmine was reminded, helplessly, of early days at the Slaughterhouse, battling through carefully-designed environments that simulated combat all over the Empire. The tubes still seemed sinister to her, even though she had been through stasis before and never felt anything. She had taken part in an insane charge against rebels in the Han System, something that no one in their right mind would have done, yet it was hard to walk up to her tube and key it open.